Friday, February 19, 2010

Lukewarm

This hasn't been a good week.

I took a Linguistics midterm on Tuesday. I did fairly well on it, and though I know the average score, it doesn't really matter because this class has no curve. All it tells me is that my score is nothing out of the ordinary. His extra credit was based on current events, which I am unfortunately quite ignorant of. His first question was, "Who is the Secretary of State? What happened to a close relative?" The answer, as I now know, is Hillary Clinton, and her husband had a heart attack last week (I knew this, just didn't make the connection). On the test, I took a stab and wrote Condoleezza Rice. He wrote, in the red pen he was grading with: "Where have you been for the past year?"

I took a Math midterm on Wednesday. The class period is 1 hour long, meaning we have approximately 45 minutes to take the test. There were 4 problems with subparts, and the test was fairly long for the time given, but in retrospect, we had 12.5 minutes a problem which is perfectly doable if you know exactly what you're doing, but not otherwise. I got above the average but below 1 standard deviation, far below my normal standards. The average itself was low, since we all got owned on the test anyway. I was most dejected. It is not hopeless, but poor scores can get anyone down.

To top it off, I recently learned that one of my favorite comic book characters, Asterix, has been commissioned to continue to be created after the second author's death (one author is already dead). Asterix has been declining in quality for some time and will no doubt continue to fall in quality, which is an incredible shame because Asterix is one of the most popular characters in all of comic history (outside of the US, which is shockingly ignorant of many things) and his adventures were full of wit, satire, and comedy. This is quite worse than Asterix dying or being discontinued, because it means that he will die from the public mind slowly.

What would you rather be? A candle, burning slowly and without respect for a long time until you run out of fuel? Or a firework, lasting mere seconds but dazzling the minds of all who see you?

Hot water and cold water both have their uses. Hot water is bliss as soup or hot chocolate on a wintry day, while iced drinks are just as pleasurable in sweltering summertime.

It's lukewarm water that no one likes, lukewarm water that does no good and tastes bad.